An Interview with John Holden
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Horowitz 1 Technology’s Impact on Mathematics: An Interview With John Holden Sarah Horowitz Robert Johnson Holden Jr. Mr. David Brandt February 11, 2014 Horowitz 2 Table of Contents Interviewer Release Form....................................................................................................3 Interviewee Release Form...................................................................................................4 Statement of Purpose...........................................................................................................5 Biography............................................................................................................................6 Historical Contextualization................................................................................................8 Interview Transcription......................................................................................................17 Interview Analysis.............................................................................................................68 Works Consulted................................................................................................................72 Horowitz 5 Statement of Purpose The purpose of the oral history of John Holden is to examine the way teaching has changed over the course of Mr. Holden's lifetime. During the 1970’s, when Mr. Holden started teaching, and shortly thereafter, academic success was seen as important. Therefore, many advances in teaching occurred. The interview with Mr. Holden provides readers with an understanding of how education has changed and become more effective. Mr. Holden’s recollection of the past forty years as an educator helps lead to the realization of the improvements in education, illustrating how drastically education has changed in order to adapt to the needs of all students. Horowitz 6 Biography Robert Johnson Holden Jr. was born in 1949 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. At the age of three-and-a-half, he moved to Natick, Massachusetts. He went to Natick High School, where he was inducted into the National Honor Society. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1971 majoring in sociology. Mr. Holden’s career started with working for the Funari Construction Co. as the general contractor and builder in his hometown, Natick, Massachusetts. He worked there for two years. Not knowing what he wanted to do next, he started his career in education at the Fessenden School, in West Newton, Massachusetts from the first week of October in 1972 through June of 1975. He was a teacher of multiple mathematics classes, a coach Horowitz 7 of soccer, varsity basketball, and varsity lacrosse, a dorm parent for the seventh grade boys and the eighth grade boys for all three years, with seven and five day boarding in each, and he founded the Outing Club, taking trips on the weekends to New Hampshire. At the start of the next school year, Mr. Holden worked at the Groton School, at which he stayed for six years. In those years, he taught a variety of mathematics courses, coached football, basketball, and lacrosse, proctored many dorms, including some with his wife, Joan Griffin Ogilvy, whom he met at the Groton School. Later, he worked at Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts for three years as the Dean of Students, as well as a coach and a mathematics teacher. During this time, he maintained his position as a dorm proctor at the Groton School with Joan, who he married on July 3, 1976. Since July of 1986, Mr. Holden has been working at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Bethesda, Maryland, and now in Potomac, Maryland as the head of the Upper School and the Academic Dean. In July 1989, Mr. Holden became the Assistant Head of School, a lacrosse coach, and a mathematics teacher. Mr. Holden will retire after 42 years of teaching in June. Although he has no definite plans for his retirement, Mr. Holden plans to explore the world, while school is in session. He will continue to read his magazines on education, and hopefully continue his work in education. Mr. Holden currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia and has three daughters and a son. He recently became a grandfather. Horowitz 8 Historical Contextualization Teaching Pedagogy: Changing America’s Education Lev Vygotsky, a famous educational psychologist of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century declared, “Pedagogy must be oriented not to the yesterday, but to the tomorrow of the child’s development. Only then can it call to life in the process of education those processes of development which now lie in the zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky 251-252). This statement illustrates that Vygotsky pushed for drastic changes in the way educators approach teaching new material. Vygotsky wanted professors to remember the purpose of a progressive education and how that affects students. John Dewey, an American philosopher, described the theory of progressive education by saying, “I believe that education…is a process of living and not a preparation for future living” (qtd. in Hassard). Since teachers began teaching, innovators have been sharing their ideas on what students should learn and how they should learn it while shaping teaching styles to maximize student learning. With the goal being the child’s ever-expanding knowledge, approaches to and reasons for improving teaching methods have differed throughout the centuries. Therefore, in order to understand the perspective of John Holden, an educator of forty-two years in the field of mathematics, one must first be aware of the history of and the changes made in educational practices from the early nineteenth century to the present. Informed by the theories of several prominent educational philosophers, professors have modernized their approach to teaching so that new information is more accessible and effective to students. Theorists Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, John Dewey, and Jerome Bruner all present different theories on approaches to teaching that are Horowitz 9 utilized by educators and debated by instructors as to which idea is the most effective. All of these theories in reality are integral to shaping the way teachers present new material to students. Born in 1896, Lev S. Vygotsky is arguably the most influential educational theorist of the early twentieth century because he presented original, thought-provoking hypotheses that changed the way educators approach teaching. Vygotsky devoted his life to producing new methods of understanding the developmental psychology of learners. Although his main focus was the most effective way to teach children, his knowledge was practical and effective for people of all ages. With this passionate interest in fine- tuning teaching methods, Vygotsky devised the sociocultural theory. “Vygotsky is best known for being an educational psychologist with a sociocultural theory. This theory suggests that social interaction leads to continuous step-by-step changes in children’s thought and behavior that can vary greatly from culture to culture.” (Woolfolk, 1998) This theory implies that interaction with people and cultural norms will aid in development and shape a child’s personalized view on the world. His theory consists of several elements such as “private speech” and “the zone of proximal development” (Gallagher), both of which improve as the subject ages. According to Christina Gallagher’s article, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, development of private speech occurs when children are very young, as they “often use private speech when a task becomes too difficult and the child doesn’t know how to proceed.” Along with his sociocultural theory, Vygotsky produced three theories of learning and development. He introduces these theories in his book Reading on the Developments of Children, stating, “All concepts of the relationship between Horowitz 10 development and learning can be put into three theoretical positions: assumption that the processes of child development are not related to learning; the assumption that learning is development; both learning and development should be combined.” (Vygotsky 29-30) The first theoretical position, child development and learning are not related, is one that the theorist Piaget 1fully supported. This theory embodied the ideology that educators can learn from a child’s natural instincts, but that teaching does not aid in the discoveries made by children themselves. The second position, based on theories such as reflex, reflects the idea that learning develops a child’s mind. These people believe that with fully conditioned reflexes, development will be influenced. Vygotsky quotes William James’ book, Talk to Teachers, in his own book, stating, “As James expressed it,” referring to this second theoretical position, “Education, in short, cannot be better described than by calling it the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior” (qtd. in Vygotsky 30). In Vygotsky’s closing remarks about the first and second theoretical positions, he compares and contrasts: "But despite the similarity between the first and second theoretical positions, there is a major difference in their assumptions about the temporal relationship between learning and developmental processes. Theorists who hold the first view assert that developmental cycles precede learning cycles; maturation precedes learning and instruction must lag behind mental growth. For the second group of theorists, both processes occur simultaneously; learning and development coincide at all 1 Piaget and Vygotsky were raised